Lurker > adjl

Count_Drachma posted...

And I only went with the Janssen finally because my brother had zero impact from it whereas some of my cousins got sick from the Pfizer and Moderna.

adjl posted...

Anecdotally, it seems like a crapshoot which vaccines/doses cause which reactions. Across all the various permutations and combinations people I know have had, I haven't noticed any clear trend in the reactions aside from the first shot generally being the mildest (and even then, one of my coworkers started with A-Z and that was his worst dose).

It's variable enough that a sample size like yours doesn't mean much of anything (nor mine, except to conclude that it's too variable to identify trends from anecdotal evidence). It's understandable that you'd follow that rationale, since humans are innately pretty bad at risk analysis and tend to place way too much value on personal experiences/close anecdotes, but it's really not a sensible way to make decisions like this.

Count_Drachma posted...

A lot of those things are politically driven, so I take it with a grain of salt.

I think it's more that you decided from day one that Janssen was your favourite and have been aggressively championing it and rejecting any criticisms ever since. Remember how insistent you were that the early evidence of blood clots must have been from that one instance of cross-contamination with A-Z, despite there not being a shred of proof of that being the reason (in a situation that would have generated pretty conclusive proof, since those monitoring side effects would have noticed if every single Janssen vaccine that caused blood clots came from the contaminated lots)?

I'm not sure why you've been cheerleading so hard for it, but the reality is that Janssen is a bottom-tier option by pretty much every metric except ease of storage, a reality that's only gotten worse with Omicron.

Judgmenl posted...

The 6700k is like ancient now.

*Looks at 2500K* >.>

Bligh_with_no_T posted...

I can't wait for them to announce their new opinions on Roe v Wade

I hope there's a game about a dog that knows its place.

"Tomorrow must be near" is a good phrase to use to add dramatic tension without actually saying anything meaningful. I like it. Not quite as versatile as "So... it has come to this," but still good.

I did Pfizer-Moderna-Moderna. First shot did very little, second knocked me out for a day, third made me quite tired but that might also have been the fact that I barely slept that night for unrelated reasons so I'm not 100% sure how much I can blame on it. Anecdotally, it seems like a crapshoot which vaccines/doses cause which reactions. Across all the various permutations and combinations people I know have had, I haven't noticed any clear trend in the reactions aside from the first shot generally being the mildest (and even then, one of my coworkers started with A-Z and that was his worst dose).

And it's been scummy, manipulative, and predatory for many years. It's not really news, it's just important not to forget it.

Count_Drachma posted...

I don't know the exact odds for a severe health impact,

The most "common" severe reaction with the mRNA vaccines is myocarditis, which happens roughly once or twice per 100,000 doses and is quite easily treatable. You're at greater risk of being killed in a car crash on your way to the clinic than by the vaccine.

It's also not surprising that Janssen's mostly off the table. The side effects tend to be more severe and it offers the worst protection of any of the main options (most notably, being virtually useless against Omicron). It's pretty telling that the only circumstances in which the FDA is approving it are cases where the individual won't otherwise get vaccinated: It's better than nothing, but worse than everything else. It'd be fantastic if it worked better, given how much more convenient it is, but unfortunately that's just not how reality worked out.

VampireCoyote posted...

im sure theres the option to grind for the upgrades rather than pay

And I'm sure that option is as miserably grindy as they could possibly make it without immediately turning everyone away.

Remember, when game companies offer microtransactions to let you "skip the grind," they're selling you a solution to a problem they and they alone created. That's not an act of generosity, no matter how hard they try to frame it as such.

It really speaks volumes about how much money these companies are able to exploit out of people with loot boxes that it's more profitable to just not release the game at all in regions where they can't have loot boxes, rather than replacing them with regular microtransactions (which are pretty lucrative in their own right).

Do you not have phones?

Judgmenl posted...

I wouldn't agree that it's trolling but it's definitely in bad faith.

It's 100% trolling. It gets brought up pretty much purely because whoever's saying it knows that some people will get it wrong, but will believe in their error strongly enough to argue with people that get it right.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


That's where this particular brand of trolling comes in, but it's still best practice to avoid writing equations like that to make the intent clear and reduce the risk of people making mistakes.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


More accurately, when it's written that way, it's hard to tell whether the person writing it meant to write it that way or if they made a mistake. Again, the math is not ambiguous, but the intent is. That equation equals 16, but because of how it's written, there's reason to suspect that the person writing it actually meant to get an answer of 1. That means it's poorly communicated.

Judgmenl posted...

Math cannot be poorly expressed.

Anything can be poorly expressed. Any time somebody says something that has a significant chance of being interpreted differently from what they intend, they've poorly expressed it. Math is no exception. Communicating effectively has to take your audience's expected interpretations and responses into account.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


It's not true according to Order of Operations (those rules are clear and unambiguous), but it's still a poor way to express the equation because it's unclear whether the author actually meant to write it that way or if they just forgot the extra parentheses that would be needed to say what they're trying to say.

The math is clear. The human element is not, and that means it's being communicated poorly. Best practice for something like this is to group all the multiplication steps on their respective sides and use redundant parentheses wherever they can add extra clarity. It's not mathematically necessary, but it helps communicate better, and that's just generally a good idea unless you're deliberately trying to come up with trick questions to test people's understanding.

Count_Drachma posted...

Is there a handheld version of Steam?

Steam Deck. It looks a lot like a Switch (in portable mode, obviously), but with a much beefier PC inside. You're generally going to end up paying a premium for that extra power compared to buying a similar PC in a non-portable format (there are multiple tiers), and there are games that some of the models can't handle (but, conveniently, a growing push for games to identify how handheld-compatible they are), but it remains an option.

It was a well-deserved suspension, but I'm glad you've grown from it instead of developing a persecution complex and crying about grand conspiracies to target you for "just a difference of opinion."

Judgmenl posted...

What the hell did bligh do this time?

Presumably his particularly hamfisted brand of shitposting, which definitely strays into moddable territory from time to time even though the sarcasm is pretty obvious to anyone that knows him.

Usually, travel restrictions calling for a negative test will also accept a positive test from over two weeks prior. I think testing positive for that long may be new with Omicron, but either way, waiting for a negative test isn't particularly necessary (even without adopting the all-too-common attitude that doing anything to avoid spreading a highly infectious disease isn't necessary).

Self isolate according to whatever the most recent provincial guidelines were before the government gave up entirely in a thinly-veiled effort to appeal to the conservative voters that were cheering on the terrorist party in Ottawa. Any guidelines released since then obviously have nothing to do with sensible public health advice and can be safely ignored in favour of the older guidelines that actually helped. Last I remember, I think it was a two-week isolation, but it may be shorter for vaccinated people.

Waiting for a negative test, however, isn't necessary, since you can test positive for like three months after the first positive test, and isolating for three months definitely isn't necessary.

hockey7318 posted...

Sunny can suck it. Not sure how he expects us to work without using a daycare.

If you aligned your chakras better you could astrally project yourself and care for your child that way.

VampireCoyote posted...

If oxygen isnt flammable then why do people on oxygen explode sometimes when they smoke

Because oxygen makes everything else more flammable. In that case, the cigarette ends up burning much more aggressively than it's supposed to, providing enough heat to ignite their clothing (which is also much more flammable, thanks to the oxygen).

Revelation34 posted...

Definition of usurp
transitive verb

1a: to seize and hold (office, place, functions, powers, etc.) in possession by force or without right

Definition of cheat (Entry 1 of 2)
transitive verb

1: to deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud
cheated the elderly couple out of their property

"Without right" sounds pretty deceitful or fraudulent to me, holding office or powers sounds like "something valuable," and seizing something generally results in depriving others of it. Yay! Synonyms!

That, and by the definition you're giving, it's impossible to cheat at games or on partners, which are the more common colloquial uses, so that should tell you right away that you're interpreting it too narrowly if that's where your understanding ends.

Revelation34 posted...

Not to mention neither are under the thesaurus of both words.

"Usurp" has a very narrow meaning, so I wouldn't expect them to be recognized as synonyms. Usurpation is a specific variety of cheating, not a term that can be freely interchanged. You wouldn't expect "driving" and "transportation" to be counted as synonyms, would you?

Specifically for oxygen (or other oxidizing materials), I can see the superfluous "Flammable" sign being reasonable. Oxygen is not itself flammable, but it's a powerful enough oxidizer that in a crash, pretty much everything else is going to be on fire regardless of whether or not there's flammable material being transported.

Did you have an affair with a veteran?

Kyuubi4269 posted...

Aren't they all oxy bottles?

Oxygen wouldn't warrant the "flammable" warning sign, but I could believe that they were just too lazy to swap it out for the load.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


I wouldn't think so. You're not saying that Pride is bad, just pointing out how rampantly hypocritical corporate pandering is.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Oh my, you expect politicians to fix things.

That is, after all, why they exist. Some problems require government to solve them. That many politicians are very bad at serving their purpose doesn't change that purpose, it just means they suck.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

If you can get people to agree to something to that extent then what do you need politicians for?

To pass the laws that effect the desired change.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Okay, now that you've identified specific issues and suggested ways to correct them there are some that I agree with. Mainly because I thought those already were the requirements to own a gun.

And you thought they were already requirements because they're such obvious common sense that it's inconceivable that they aren't. This is why there's such a demand for "common sense gun control": because it doesn't currently exist and that's utterly absurd.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

However, holding one person responsible for the actions of another goes too far.

If you loan a gun to your friend, and that friend goes on to murder somebody with that gun, you can absolutely be considered an accessory to that murder. If you loaned your car to somebody without a license, you can be considered partially to blame for any accidents they cause. This just takes those ideas a step further and makes gun owners responsible for directly supervising their guns at all times, including ensuring that whoever they're giving one to will use it responsibly. Failing to do so is at least negligent (and should be considered criminally so) and in some cases directly contributory.

The bottom line is that guns are dangerous. That means they should only ever be in the hands of responsible, well-meaning people. In order to make that happen, though, everyone with a gun has to take responsibility for ensuring they stay out of the hands of irresponsible or malicious people. There are, of course, limits to how much any given gun owner can do, and those should be taken into account in assigning responsibility (see: my caveat of "unless the gun has been reported stolen within a reasonable grace period," and I'm quite open to entertaining other exceptions if you can think of any), but taking responsibility for your guns has to include taking responsibility for who uses them and how.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

This brings me back to the original question. How common sense gun laws and better funding would not help these issues.

Solving more of the issues is still going to be better than solving fewer of them, even if you don't solve all of them. You seem to be approaching this with an attitude of "why bother fixing anything if you can't fix everything," but that's very rarely a reasonable approach to take to much of anything, and this is not such an exception.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

The problem was his desire to strike out with violence. Gun laws and funding wouldn't address that since no one cared enough to take note of it.

Funding (and otherwise improving) mental health and other support services would absolutely have increased the chance of somebody taking note of his issues and trying to address them. It's no guarantee, of course, but again, something doesn't have to be a guaranteed fix to be worth trying.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

If it was harder for him to get a gun then he still would have found some way to lash out since the gun wasn't the underlying problem.

And if he lashed out without a gun, there might be 3-4 people dead at most, instead of 18 or whatever this body count ended up being (I honestly can't keep track anymore). He might have just injured somebody, leaving an opportunity to finally treat the issues that went ignored for so long (though the American justice system would be more likely to briefly jail him for the assault and do nothing else, which is part of the issue). He might just have killed himself, which would be tragic, but a lot less tragic than taking a dozen children with him.

About a week after Sandy Hook, there was a mass stabbing in China that the pro-gun crowd latched onto as evidence that controlling guns wouldn't stop such mass casualty events because people will use whatever they can get to unleash their breakdown. Except that mass stabbing had zero deaths among the couple dozen victims, a stark contrast to the 20-odd dead children that were dominating Western headlines. Yes, there are ways to lash out that don't involve guns, so banning or restricting guns won't completely eliminate the problem but by and large, those alternatives aren't going to be nearly as dangerous, nor as readily accessible as guns are in the US. Again, you won't completely solve the problem, but you can make it a whole lot better (especially with gun control being just one part of the solution).

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...
I would say it's the opposite. Aggressive identitarianism that a lot of Americans feel conflicts with their individualism. There's a large cultural push for people to identify based on race, gender, and sexual orientation when they just don't have much in common with other people in that grouping.

That's... really not the case. I'm not sure where you're getting that understanding, but it's not a particularly accurate reflection of any real-world social interactions outside of instances where people are facing discrimination for some facet of their identity. Meanwhile, abandoning kids (and adults) to solve their own problems and mocking them for any sort of interdependence is very common. That's actually what caused the shooting that inspired the phrase "going postal": The guy had a really bad lisp or stutter or other speech impediment, and his coworkers bullied him pretty relentlessly for it. He tried bringing the issue to his supervisor, but he was repeatedly told to "deal with it" himself. So he dealt with it himself.

Again, that's certainly not the whole picture, but as it pertains to victims of bullying and the like lashing out, it's a pretty significant component.

hungrymike posted...

I would advise against racking up more credit card debt.

This. Generally speaking, don't rack up credit card debt unless you have no other choice (and even then, you should look into other debt management options that have lower interest rates because credit cards are a pretty bad place to park your debt). You definitely have the choice not to buy a PS5, so that's the better route to go.

Revelation34 posted...

Usurp isn't cheating anything.

By definition, it's illegitimately/illegally taking the throne. That means whatever rules are in place are being violated, which in turn means it's cheating.

VampireCoyote posted...

to have more of it, duh

Yeah, I've never understood that rationale. Whether 0% of your cheque goes to taxes or 70%, you're still going to have more money working than not (provided whatever welfare system you have doesn't actively discourage working by paying more than work would and stopping as soon as work starts, which is why UBI is generally a better idea than unemployment benefits).

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

So it's a thing that exist? Because that's what I claimed.

It exists, but it's not adequate.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Since it's already a thing that exists, what changes to the law would make it functional?

Mostly getting rid of the regulations the NRA lobbied for that prohibit the registry from being computer-based, but also the point I mentioned lower down about standardizing serial numbers so cops can more reliably find and provide them when needed. Tack on that other point lower down about holding gun owners accountable for crimes committed with their guns unless they're reported stolen and maybe a few other tweaks, and you'd end up with a much better system than the current one.

The bottom line is that an adequate national gun registry would allow any gun found to be traced back to its registered owner in a timely fashion. In a fantasy world, that might include ballistic marks as well as a sort of "fingerprint database" for any bullets found, but in practice ballistic marks aren't nearly as consistent as people like to think they are, so I'm not sure how much value that would have.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Making things political is more along the lines of calling attention to a problem and not trying to solve it. Like I said above, it's just a talking point that will be forgotten about as soon as elections are over.

I think you're confusing "making things political" with "expecting politicians to do everything to fix things." While most of these solutions do involve decisions at a government level, a huge part of that is rallying the public to hold politicians accountable enough to make those decisions as more than hollow election promises. That's what it means to make things political: To call for larger-scale change.

Yes, politicians are often useless figureheads that stop caring about issues the moment they get elected on the back of them. Holding them accountable for that is also "making things political."

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

1&2) I thought these were already required by law. I've never purchased a gun myself. I understand there's a qualification and screening process.

The waiting period is not, in most (if not all) of the US, which is a terrible oversight given that waiting periods have been conclusively proven to dramatically reduce firearm use in suicides in particular (which, in turn, dramatically reduces suicide "success" rates). It's also not a particularly controversial one as far as right to bear arms goes, but Americans are impatient and the NRA (and the arms manufacturers backing them) push back against it because they like reducing the chance that people back out of impulse purchases.

The background check process is variable. It's skipped for pretty much every private sale (many of which are illegal and wouldn't follow the law anyway, but a more robust registration program would allow that to be traced back to the original, legal owner to hold them accountable for supplying the black market, ultimately reducing those). Mental health evaluations aren't included in any state, nor do I believe are automatic exclusions for anyone with a history of cruelty to animals (domestic violence sometimes is for the perpetrators, but being a victim is also a major risk factor and should similarly result in the purchase being refused until they're cleared). Safety and competency courses are not required for the purchase, generally speaking, but many states that require a permit to carry do require a training course to get that permit.

There is generally some amount of screening process, but there's significant room for improvement across the board, improvement that needs to come at the federal level because states have proven to be woefully inconsistent about it (which creates problems because state borders aren't exactly secure).

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

3&4) No amount of legislature will make people competent.

#3 is more of a manufacturer thing, and legislature can absolutely make manufacturers comply with a unified standard (generally by fining them if they fail to do so). #4 is less a matter of competency and more a matter of carelessness: By raising the stakes, people are going to be inclined to be less careless. Those that are still careless can then be weeded out by the legislature accordingly because it will dictate that they can't have guns unless they are suitably careful with them. Presumably, such a law would be paired with clearly defined standards for what constitutes "secure," probably with some manner of formal certification process and possibly prohibiting anything that does not meet those standards from being advertised as a "gun safe" (or at least defining in the law that a certified gun safe must be used to secure the guns/ammo).

More than "making people competent," though, it's a matter of making sure that people that aren't competent don't own guns. There's nothing wrong with competent, responsible people owning guns. The point of gun control is to prevent the people that aren't competent or responsible from doing so. Those that can't be made competent simply shouldn't have guns.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I think that no matter how much advertising or capacity they had the shooter still would not have availed himself of their services.

There will inevitably be people that slip through the cracks, regardless of how robust a system is, but that doesn't mean there isn't substantial room for improvement, nor that this specific case couldn't have been prevented. Part of providing the service more effectively includes encouraging people to access the supports that are available, which often involves a larger cultural shift to promote it (as opposed to the all-too-common attitude that boys/men that need mental health support have somehow failed as boys/men, which is a classic example of toxic masculinity).

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

On that note, why does the US produce so many social outcast?

That's a pretty complex question, but I'd blame a solid chunk of it on the aggressive individualism that a lot of Americans feel is a core part of their identity. There's a large cultural push for people to deal with their own problems and not rely on anyone else, so it's honestly not that surprising that a lot of bullied people take it upon themselves to remove their bullies. Distilling the issue down to such a level is a gross oversimplification, though.

Revelation34 posted...

Kings by definition can't cheat to become a king.

The English language literally invented the word "usurp" to describe that.

Krazy_Kirby posted...

loot boxes aren't gambling,

adjl posted...

There's some (very little) room to debate whether or not loot boxes are technically gambling, given the lack of direct monetary reward, but it's unquestionably true that they have the same potential for mental and financial harm that real gambling has. Given that that potential for harm is the sole reason gambling is regulated, video games should see similar regulation.

I don't even need to add to that. You should really try to avoid making arguments that have already been shot down.

Krazy_Kirby posted...

if they have their credit card saved on the system, and don't require a password for purchases, that's their own damn fault.

Nobody that hasn't actively followed the gaming industry's shenanigans over the past few years would ever dream that was even possible for their kid to spend thousands of dollars on pretend soccer men. When parents leave their card saved and unsecured on the system, that's usually because they only expect it to be used to buy whole games and they trust their kid (often quite reasonably), never imagining that the game they've already paid for is going to manipulate their kid into spending hundreds or thousands more on it. Heck, in a lot of cases, the kid doesn't even realize they're spending money (or if they do realize they're spending money, they don't realize it's a significant amount) and might need to ask their parents for permission, because these games do so much to obfuscate the amount of money players are spending (a common trick in casinos).

Are there safeguards in place to allow parents to prevent their cards from being misused like that? Yes, and a lot of these problems could be prevented by using those safeguards. But the companies making all of that money absolutely could and should be doing more to make it obvious that those safeguards are needed. They very deliberately choose not to because that would interfere with their ability to manipulate children into spending thousands of dollars on pretend soccer men, and that is a choice for which they absolutely should be held accountable.

Count_Drachma posted...

However, considering the almost non-existent regulation on alcohol which does far worse

It wouldn't be a Zeus post about a social problem if he didn't manage to whatabout alcohol in there somehow.

I don't disagree that laws around alcohol need some work (mostly driving: interlock systems should be in every car and drunk drivers should automatically be sentenced as though they killed somebody, with zero room for mitigating factors that might let anyone with a good enough lawyer stay on the road), but saying "we don't regulate alcohol strongly enough for my liking, so we shouldn't regulate any other dangerous things" really doesn't contribute anything to any discussion.

Metalsonic66 posted...

Booster Packs are gambling

That's debatable, but that is indeed an argument that can be made. They're decidedly less egregious about it than most loot boxes, given that they're paid for directly with money (no intermediate currencies to confuse things), the odds are clearly stated, and the overall systems are generally designed so you don't need to buy a ton to put together a decent deck, but they do appeal to the same principles of using random rewards to reinforce addictive behaviour and preying on FOMO to get people to spend more than they otherwise might.

Legally speaking, they tend to get around potential gambling regulation by saying that they haven't incorporated any kind of variable value into the booster packs: From their end, every card is equally valuable, so every booster pack is equally valuable and any deviation from that comes entirely from a secondary market that they can't control. That's definitely more of a technicality than a genuine argument, but it's enough for them to have dodged regulations so far. There's a fair chance those regulators will revisit them if lootboxes are regulated, though, given the obvious parallels.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

a national gun registry

That "national gun registry" is a handful of people manually looking up inconsistent, rarely-complete records on technology so obsolete I hadn't even heard about it until reading this article:
https://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns

There is no proper national database of guns in the US. The NRA has fought tooth and nail to prevent the government from implementing anything remotely resembling the technology and manpower needed to effectively keep track of more guns than there are citizens, purely because the NRA (and the lobbyists funding it) doesn't want the government keeping track of guns.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Social services, education, and mental health support failed in this case.

Which means they need to be better. You know, the usual lesson provided by failure.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I'm not a fan of making things political to begin with.

Ultimately, "making things political" means "identifying a problem and trying to solve it." The alternative is ignoring the problem and not trying to solve it, which is generally a really stupid idea.

"I don't want to get political" means "I'm okay with the status quo and don't want to have to think about why that is." At best, that's escapism. At worst, it's an active defense of something you know is very seriously hurting other people, while hiding behind an utterly disgusting veil of "you're the problem for wanting to change it." No part of that spectrum is a good thing so don't do that. If you don't like a proposed political change, grow a pair and challenge it directly.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I'm not arguing their effectiveness. It seems that the shooter had no support structure in his life that would have lead him to seek out those services. The services could be super effective but that means nothing if the people who need them don't utilize them.

Part of having effective support services entails making sure they get to the people that need them. The question of access can be safely assumed to be tacitly included whenever people talk about improving such services.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Again I have to ask, what would you consider to be common sense?

• Mandatory comprehensive background check, recent mental health evaluation, and safety course for every gun purchase, with fines and/or jail time and immediate revocation of all owned guns from anyone found to be violating this requirement (both seller and buyer). If the background check reveals anything related to domestic violence or cruelty to animals, suspend the purchase until the buyer completes and is cleared by a suitable therapy program to eliminate that risk factor
• Mandatory 2-week (or thereabouts) waiting period on all gun purchases
• A proper, computerized gun registry, with a unified, consistent system for indicating serial numbers for all new guns produced (complete with re-numbering existing, older guns if needed to be compliant with the new standard)
• All owned guns are to be stored securely when not in use (with rigorous standards for "securely" that don't mean "a kid can get in with a paper clip and 15 seconds on Youtube"). All ammo is also to be stored similarly securely, separately. The gun owner is held responsible for any and all negligence or criminal activity conducted with their guns while they are unsecured, unless they have reported them stolen (with a suitable grace period).

All of which are already enacted in plenty of other countries that see far lower rates of gun violence and mass shootings than the US, so it's not like there's no precedent for any of this. Those indoctrinated by the NRA's propaganda just lose their minds whenever the prospect of limiting their guns at all comes up.

While there's more to it than that, I am generally in favour of assigning mass shooters random numbers and using those in place of their names in all associated media coverage, outside of cases where there is actually a need to identify them publicly (which is rare).

That is another point: Questions about regulating violence in games aside, paid loot boxes in games should absolutely mean it is as illegal to sell those games to minors as it is to sell that same minor a lottery ticket or welcome them into a casino. There's some (very little) room to debate whether or not loot boxes are technically gambling, given the lack of direct monetary reward, but it's unquestionably true that they have the same potential for mental and financial harm that real gambling has. Given that that potential for harm is the sole reason gambling is regulated, video games should see similar regulation. The only reason they don't is that those with the power to make those regulations understand nothing about gaming as a whole beyond "we get more lobbying money if we don't regulate them."

On the other hand, if you did have nigh-unlimited storage, would you ever be able to find what you were looking for?

TitanusGodzilla posted...

I know.

Then you know that your analogy is fundamentally broken and you're back to square one as far as making a compelling argument goes. Please try again.

TitanusGodzilla posted...

I'm just saying, if video games contributed to the same amount of deaths as guns(and you csn add the wounded on top of that), I would not want my games to be regulated or banned.

If there's a conclusive causal link, then they absolutely should be regulated. That regulation, however, would most likely take the form of more strictly enforcing rules against selling T- and M-rated games to those under 13/17, as well as revisiting the rating criteria to make sure they reflect what's least likely to cause developmental harm instead of the largely arbitrary approach the ESRB takes now. That's not something that's likely to affect adults at all, so there's nothing to really worry about (unless you're under 17, in which case you aren't going to suffer for having to wait a couple years). An outright ban would be largely unnecessary.

TitanusGodzilla posted...

I love games far too much to give them up, especially in the name of saving lives.

If the death toll was say: 40,000 deaths, then I might consider it.

But not for 13,000.

I chose video games over that many lives.

If you're willing to knowingly sacrifice any number of lives for a leisure activity, you're either a terrible person or somebody who's dangerously addicted to that activity. Arbitrarily picking a larger number than reality doesn't change that, especially where we all know you'd just move the goalposts and pick an even larger number if a hypothetical 40k year were ever to happen.

TitanusGodzilla posted...

How so?

Please explain.

Because guns are tools that enable people to kill, which is not at all analogous to media that might inspire them to. The false equivalency should be pretty obvious.

The_tall_midget posted...

I say we lock someone in a room with a video game cartridge. When the cartridge eventually kills that person, we can then ban video games.

That still wouldn't be the game, though. We could expect the same result from a cartridge with no data on it, and the data is what constitutes a "video game."

TitanusGodzilla posted...

No.

Then your analogy is fundamentally broken and you're back to square one as far as making a compelling argument goes. Please try again.

The_tall_midget posted...

SMV.

Let's play "spot the incel"!

TitanusGodzilla posted...

Neither are guns, yet despite that we blame guns instead of people and mental health.

Do people kill people with video games?

Revelation34 posted...

Baseball doesn't have touchdowns. It has goals.

What if your goal is to score a touchdown?

Razer Diamondback. I had to do a fair amount of looking to find an ambidextrous mouse with extra buttons (mostly for back/forward in browsers, honestly), since I tend to use a mouse left-handed for regular use but swap to right-handed use for most games (rather than trying to rebind WASD to something on the right side of the keyboard), but it's served my purposes pretty nicely.

The worst is when you bite your lip or cheek or whatever, then it turns into a canker sore, and because it's a bit swollen you keep biting it until it heals.

Arcturusisnow posted...

Name one time they have.

Well, the ESRB was formed largely in response to regulatory efforts from a Democrat government. That would probably count. It's definitely been more of a right-wing thing lately, but pearl clutching over video game content has a pretty strong bipartisan history. Like so many countless examples throughout the history of entertainment, it's a matter of old people worrying about what the impressionable youth of today are getting into, and both parties are dominated by old people that don't understand new media.

Christmas 2019, specifically flying back to school after coming home for Christmas. I guess that would actually have been January 2020, but close enough.

Similarly, when that gunman rampaged across Nova Scotia a couple years back, there was a least one instance of a cop catching him, but hiding in the bushes instead of engaging, so he was free to keep going.

Between the two, acceleration is far more useful for everyday use than a top speed that exceeds local speed limits, but neither is particularly useful past what would be considered normal for every car currently on the market. But then I'm boring and don't like to pretend I'm a racecar driver when I go to get groceries.

Blightzkrieg posted...

I'm gonna ask a dumb hypothetical because I'm a troll

If it were shown through repeated studies that violent video games do contribute to increased violence (in the same way that access to firearms do), would the same individuals calling for more gun control support increased video game control?

In the sense of actually restricting the sale of T- and M-rated games to people under 13 and 17? Sure. As it stands now, it's little more than a formality that kids have little to no difficulty skirting if they want to. In the sense of restricting what sort of content is allowed to be included in games? That'd be more of a problem.

THEGODDAMNBATMA posted...

Notice: more violence in media, less sexual content. And guess what? Our society has been desensitized to violence, but sensitized to sexual content.

That's very much a chicken/egg situation, and I'm much more inclined to believe that media is less inclined to portray sexual content than violence because society pushes back so hard against it (perhaps the most egregious recent example being banning Maus for depicting nudity but not for depicting genocide) than that society is so sensitive about sexual content because media is less inclined to portray it. The causality likely does go both ways, but by and large, media reflects cultural trends more so than it defines them (with a handful of exceptions where the creators deliberately defy trends for the sake normalizing something that's unfairly vilified, like Star Trek showing an interracial kiss).